Items Needed
Items to Sell at Shows
A significant portion of the Society's income comes from sales at railroad shows. If you have any railroad items that you'd like to donate, we'd love to turn them into money to support our efforts.
Anyone wishing to contribute sale items should call Jim Jordan at 303-961-5929.
Items Acquired - Success!
Caboose stove
After five years of searching we have located a railroad, early 1880-1890, caboose stove. It is in excellent condition and all original. The seller wants $500 for it. We already have a coal shuttle marked GN, and a scoop marked NKP. Now we need a caboose stove. Most caboose stoves in very good condition go for $1200 to $1500 or more. So it is a good buy. Next fall we can sit around the caboose stove and cook stew and sing railroad songs. Jesting! But it will make a fantastic addition to the caboose. Anyone who donates will get a set of our SANTA FE 1882 coffee cups and a set of our Prospector coffee cups. Plus a train ride ticket for two persons. The photo at right is the actual stove.
Well we did it! Thanks to each of you we put the $500 together. Skip says he will pick it up and deliver it to Calhan. We need to figure out how they put something to absorb the heat from the legs as the stove heated up. Fire bricks, asbestos, a pad of some type, I have no idea. Will have to look at the one in Greeley and Forney's.
Many thanks to our Contributors:
Cady and Linda Daniels
Dave Weddle,
Steve Wadle,
Wayne Kemp,
John Emmot,
Doug Hesbol,
Michelle Kempema,
Elizabeth and Michael Malin,
Jamie Foster,
Don Vogel,
Jim Jordan,
and C. J. Cullian.
Make your check or money order out to RMRHS, put "caboose stove" on the memo line, and send to:
Rocky Mountain Railroad Heritage Society
PO Box 969
Englewood, Colorado, 80151- 0969
What I have been told is that after World War 2 they began reeplacing the coal stoves with oil stoves. My brother who was a lineman with the C&S said that they still used coal stoves as late as 1971 or 1972 in MOW cars. As MOW was considered the worst job on the railroad at the time and was looked down upon by the road engine crews as bums, it may have been deliberate at that time. Reason why they were looked down on is that up until the mid 1980s when someone would use the john in a passenger train they would flush the toilet and it would drop right on to the tracks, where MOW would work. After the mid 80s they were required to have holding tanks like an RV. So you can see why the road crews would look down on them. A real pecking order.
